


howl

by minarchy



Category: X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Horror, M/M, Violence, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-27 19:12:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minarchy/pseuds/minarchy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It would be nice to know if there's a dangerous, wild animal wandering my grounds," Charles says, and Erik almost laughs at the irony. Almost.<br/>"No," he confirms, "you have no dangerous, wild animals wandering your grounds." <i>Just the one sitting in your kitchen</i>, he adds, internally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [this prompt](http://1stclass-kink.livejournal.com/2292.html?thread=1369332#t1369332). (unimaginative) title from florence + the machine's [howl](http://youtu.be/DtXc9h2nki8). alas, unbeta'd, as usual. also: shaishda [made me arts! ♥](http://shaish.deviantart.com/art/Howl-244662146)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He can taste bad coffee at the back of his mouth, a strange, harsh scent-taste behind his nose; it is only after he swipes his tongue across his lips and tastes hot, rich copper that he realises that it is blood. He cannot remember when he hit his nose hard enough to make it bleed, but the scientist in him hopes that it is the result of a direct impact, and not some internal injury. He really doesn't want to die at the bottom of a lift shaft.

The most prevalent memory from his childhood is one that is not uncommon amongst others of his age and creed: pain, cold, hunger. It is raining when he first arrives, and the mud and freezing water oozing through his battered leather shoes, worn thin through years of use and stretching-out as his feet grew within their constrictive confines. It aches in his bones.

(Winter howls down from the mountains like a dozen screaming hags racing through the streets; he isn't supposed to be out of doors at this hour, the curfew bell having run long ago and the guards out in the streets but they need _something_ , anything that his thin, bony hands can scavenge from the gutters outside of the ghetto. He didn't mean to stray so far, but now he looks about and finds himself so much further from the tall walls that he had ever thought it possible to be.

The thought twists in his mind to just _run_ , to flee and escape and never look back. Mama would want him to, he knows; but he cannot leave her, cannot just go and not tell her that he is alive and free rather than beaten and broken open on the cobbles beneath the hobnailed boots of the soldiers on patrol.

He can smell – meat, he thinks, thick and cloying with blood; which means that it's not kosher, but that was never an option, and the copper tang is so heavy on the air that it _must_ be fresh. Mama could make stew to last for a week on a single slab on meat.

Bright eyes glare at him out of the darkness, and Erik screams as teeth rip into his chest.)

No one in the camps is fed enough, not even the guards, most of the time. Some of the prisoners, ones with more hope and thought enough to look to a future that filled more than just the next few minutes, believe that this must mean that the war was going badly, that Göbbels Four Year Plan has fallen flat and the Nazis are losing. That the Allies will come for them, any day now.

Erik does not believe this. He believes in what he knows: the constant, spasmodic pain in his hands and feet where the bones are brittle and the joints swollen from the cold and wet; the sores where his clogs and prison uniform have rubbed, ill-fitting, against him; the endless ache in his belly, where his stomach makes conversation with his spine.

Even after Herr Doktor takes him aside, Erik is not fed. Sometimes, not for days. Especially in the week leading up to the full moon: Herr Doktor wants to see if hunger makes him stronger. Makes him more violent, more angry, more desperate for the kill.

Measurements are taken, stone-faced nurses pushing him roughly in the direction they want him to go as they carefully write down his weight, width, muscle mass. Erik assumes that they make similar measurements when he is changed. He doesn't remember enough from those times to know.

The first time Herr Doktor lets him hunt, Erik awakes feeling bloated and heavy, his stomach a swollen mound beneath his protruding ribs. There is blood everywhere, and military-grade boots lie discarded on the floor. When he is able to move, he finds feet still within them.

Schmidt smiles brightly when Erik is pulled before him.

"Well _done_ , Erik," he says, beaming and folding his long fingers before him on his desk. "You may keep the boots, if you like."

His toes curl within the leather, warmer and more comfortable than they have been for as far as Erik's memory allows, tacky with the blood that remained after he had pulled the feet from them, fingers slipping on the protruding bone as he tugged them free. He has no shirt, just the trousers that the nurse had thrown at him when she had come to take him to see Herr Doktor. Schmidt's eyes feast greedily on the swell of his heavy stomach; filled, Erik knows, with the flesh of the soldier sacrificed to him. Erik watches him stare, and dreams vividly on the day when he will be able to open Schmidt's chest with the doctor still alive and breathing, when he will be make him watch as Erik holds his beating heart out towards him, dripping his own blood onto the doctor's face.

He only hopes that he will not have to be wolf when he does, but he will take what he can get.

 

Life in Westchester is just as boring as Charles remembers from before leaving for university. He had chosen Oxford deliberately: it was as far away as possible from the dusty, dreary old house he had grown up in, as much a prison as a three foot cell even with its size, dark-panelled corridors spilling out from the atrium in a sprawling, haughty mess.

The mansion is a mess of painful memories, the very air calling forth the small, skinny child who was a constant disappointment to his high-society mother, a constant source of annoyance for his step-father, an endless source of vicious amusement for his step-brother.

But no. He will not think of that today. Today is his thirtieth birthday, and Charles is determined that he will not spend it steeped in melancholy and brandy. Briefly, he considers driving to town to while away the day in a bar or restaurant or coffee shop, but upon further reflection he decides to spend the day in the house, to make memories within its walls that he isn't afraid to touch.

This decision stimulated mostly by his accidental stumbling into the second floor lounge and registering with some dismay that everything was still dust-sheeted. His mother would have thrown a fit, and Charles is momentarily tempted to do the same: to turn on his heel and slam the door, leave the whole place to rot into its foundations, inheritance be damned. But he doesn't, because he is a grown man, now, and he will not be shackled by pubescent rebellion.

He has no staff to keep, or to keep him, but he had made arrangements with the butcher's and the grocer's and the milkman to keep him stocked: the single gardener, a bitter, cynical Presbyterian whom Charles had hated as a child and hates only a little less as an adult, lets them in to fill the pantry. He helps himself to what he wants as well, more like than not, despite the generous salary that trickles directly out of Charles' inheritance.

Charles himself spends most of his time in the large and well-furnished library, buried deep in the centre of the mansion; it is, aside from his own bedroom and the servants' stairway, where he would play imaginary games with himself as a boy, the only place in the house that he can stand to be. As such, it is also the only room that shows any sign of inhabitance; although Charles has a favourite corner, and so the majority of the stiff, expensive leather furniture remains sheeted and covered.

If Tompkins, the gardener (or grounds-keeper, to give him his proper title, but Charles has seen the grounds since returning to Westchester and they don't look very kept to _him_ ), ever creeps around the house apart from letting in the deliveries, then Charles never hears him. He shuts himself away with his tea and his books for days at a time, and pays no willing attention to the outside world.

Except.

Today is his birthday, and today he will make an effort. Seeing as it was the lounge that sparked this sense of decision, it is there that he will start; and it is as Charles is heading down to the laundry room, his arms full of sheets and his hair full of dust, that he hears it: the distinctive noise of someone moving about in the kitchen. That entire room is stone and heavy, dark wood, and Charles knows both from memory and from scientific study how the sound travels and carries in that room.

He deposits his bundle of sheets in a corner, and heads towards the kitchen.

"Tompkins?" he calls, leaning and peering as he rounds corners, as if he will be able to catch sight of the gardener's familiar stoop and shuffle; the sounds from the kitchen pause, as if startled into silence by Charles' summons. "Tompkins," Charles says again, "is that you?"

He doesn't, honestly, expect an answer, so he isn't perturbed when one is forth-coming.

"If you're stealing," he says, finally reaching the entrance to the kitchen and throwing the door open, all righteous fury and Lord-of-the-Manor, "I'll have your hide –"

And stops dead in his tracks, staring.

 _There is a man in my kitchen_ , his eyes inform him, and his deep-bred sensibilities add, _and he's bleeding all over my floor_.

"You're not Tompkins," he says, dumbly, blinking at the man who is raiding his fridge, bread hanging from between his teeth. "Obviously," he adds, hurriedly, when the man looks like he's going to either bolt or stab Charles with the bread knife, and Charles isn't entirely sure which reaction he thinks worse of. "Of course you're not Tompkins. Ah. Are you okay?"

The man stares at him. Charles attempts a smile; it feels rusty on his face.

"You're bleeding," he clarifies, and the man doesn't look away. "Does that happen a lot?" Charles asks, when he _still_ doesn't reply. "The bleeding thing, I mean; although you could answer concerning the breaking into people's homes as well, if you like. I'm kind of loose on that point, too."

The man doesn't speak. His fingers slip from the refrigerator door and his knees crumple as he slides to the ground, but his eyes don't release Charles' until he loses consciousness.

Charles, whose only prior experience with unconscious people is when they pass out due to over-consumption of alcohol, has a momentary blank as to what he is supposed to do.

Carefully, attempting to step around the bloody footprints smeared across the flagstones, he moves closer to the man, crouching next to him for examination. Now that he is unconscious, Charles affects a scientific approach, cataloguing the man's injuries (several vicious-looking cuts along his shoulders and arms, as if something has clawed him; deep bruising spreading out from one eye and down the side of his face, almost like the butt of a rifle, or a flat-soled boot was slammed into it; a myriad of small cuts and scratches, that are already closing). Reaching out to press a palm to his forehead, Charles deliberately ignores the brutal scar covering the man's stomach and ribcage, embossed onto his skin in ridges and sworls.

"Fever," he says, his voice echoing slightly in the empty room. "Well, my lad, you're in quite a state." His habit of speaking his thoughts aloud had irritated his flatmates in Oxford no end, especially when he was running through the arguments surrounding his thesis, but he found it calming. Letting his thoughts out into the open air allowed them to order themselves more fully in his mind, and made them seem more sensible and tangible. More achievable. Like, for example:

"We'd best get you upstairs to bed, I think." He frowns, pursing his lips as he looks down at the prostrate figure in front of him. "How we're to do that, though, I've no idea. I don't suppose you're lighter than you look?"

He isn't, but Charles manages as best as he can; arms looped underneath his armpits and hands interlocked around his torso, Charles gets him semi-upright, manoeuvring carefully backwards. The stairs are somewhat awkward, and Charles winces inwardly with every step as the man's feet bang upwards against the lip. He pays special attention to ensuring that they do not twist or catch – the state he's in, Charles is fairly certain a twisted ankle would be the least of his worries, but nonetheless. No need to add extra injuries.

Eventually, with much grunting and sweating, Charles levers the man onto the bed in one of the (many) spare rooms; he gets blood all over the sheets, but Charles hardly cares. It isn't like he doesn't have far too many spares, anyway.

"Water," he says. "Clean these cuts first, and then to find the iodine. I'll bet it's in the same place – back in a moment." He pats the man's arm. "Don't go anywhere."

 

Even in his sleep, the man hisses and half-flinches as Charles gently wipes the worst of the blood from him; his shirt, by this point, is a lost cause, and Charles mentally consigns it to the bin along with the sheets. Luckily, the shallower cuts only bleed a little, no more than surface cover to re-clot when he's cleaned them, but the more serious ones continue to leak blood over his shoulders and into the linen. Charles covers them with the spare cloth as he applies the iodine to the others.

"Can't do stitches, I'm afraid," he says, cheerfully, as he gently swabs the wounds and holds the man down as he tries to curl away. "Hopefully you won't need them, otherwise it's a trip to the hospital for you." He gazes into the man's face, noting the lines about his eyes and mouth, and the creases on his brow that do not seem to fade away. "And I don't know if you'd want that," he says, quietly.

The bowl of water is stained pink and brown with the blood and iodine. There is blood beneath his fingernails, and holding his shirt to his chest, drying tacky on the exposed skin of his neck.

"Fever," he mutters. "Sweat it out or cool it off? Why didn't I take that med class? Stupid boy."

After a moment's indecision, chewing on his lip as he considers the best action, Charles decides on both; he pulls the quilt up to his armpits, and collects ice water from the kitchen to lave a clean cloth in, before placing it on his forehead.

 

He's unconscious for two days, although he wakes, briefly, in the twilight before dawn. Charles has been cat-napping in the armchair, dragged over from the window to sit by the bedside, and he's on the verge of sleep himself when the man's eyes crack open and he focuses, delirious, on Charles.

"Hello," Charles says, his voice rough and slow with sleep. "My name's Charles Xavier."

The man stares at him for a moment, before licking his lips. "Erik," he says, scratchily. Charles wonders how long it's been since he last spoke. "Erik Lehnsherr."

"It's very nice to meet you." Charles angles a glass of water to his lips, and the man – Erik – gulps some down, spilling most of it over his chin. "I'm going to take care of you, Erik."

Erik blinks at him, slowly, before his eyes slid shut again.

 

His fever breaks half-way through the second day, and Charles sleeps for the rest of it, relaxing into exhaustion and slumping against the side of the wing-back.

 

Erik is already awake when Charles returns, having showered and changed and bearing broth, bread and coffee. Contrary to popular belief, Charles can look after himself to a reasonable degree; he had to survive university, refusing to take on staff for fear of becoming one of the trust-fund babies that swaggered around campus. He is an only child, and whilst there had been the housekeeper for when he was home during the holidays, she often wouldn't be around to cook for him when he wished to eat.

"Ah," he says, delightedly, when he re-enters the room to see Erik trying to push himself upright. "Steady now." He places the tray on the bedside table, and puts his hands underneath Erik's arms, helping him into a sitting position. "The cuts in your shoulders are barely closed – you don't want to be opening them again."

Erik looks at him, warily, like a cornered animal. Charles smiles disarmingly, hoping that he isn't about to get hit in the face; despite his weakened state, Charles has never really been in a fight, and Erik could probably knock him down without much trouble.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he says, earnestly. "Do you remember what happened?"

"I was – looking for food," Erik says, slowly, still watching Charles with a fierce intensity. "You interrupted me."

Charles' eyebrow quirks. "Forgive me," he says, drily. "I must stop intervening when people are trying to steal from my house."

Erik's mouth turns down at the corners, and Charles sighs inwardly.

"Well, if you're hungry." He sits in the chair, and picks up the bowl. "It's chicken," he says, when Erik eyes the bowl as if it might bite him. "Chicken soup is necessary when sick, I'm told. Speeds the road to recovery. Although," he ponders, "I've not real idea why. There's nothing particularly remarkable about chicken soup."

The spoon remains on the tray, Erik wrapping his long hands around the bowl and drinking from it, mouth against the rim. Charles sips his coffee, watching him slowly drain it.

"Why are you helping me?" he asks, lowering the bowl until it's resting in his lap. Charles' forehead creases, his eyebrows drawing together in confusion.

"You collapsed in my kitchen," he says. "What was I supposed to do?"

"Call the police," Erik says, flatly.

"Ah, yes." Charles smiles. "That would have been the more prudent course of action, wouldn't it?"

 

Erik stares at this strange man, reclining in his wingback as if he was entirely at ease, as if it isn't odd in the slightest to adopt and nurse thieves. Xavier sips at his coffee, the china fine and elegant, probably worth more than anything Erik has ever owned; but he holds it carelessly, clearly a habit of a lifetime spent around expense and luxury.

Xavier is watching him back, his face relaxed and calm but there is a focused intensity about his gaze that gives Erik the impression of being _analysed_. It's not a sensation that he is particularly comfortable with. Xavier cocks his head, ever so slightly, and the angle makes his mouth appear to curve upwards in one corner.

"Would you like me to?" he asks, voice still maintaining that careful balance between calm and kind. Almost as if he is talking to a frightened child, or an animal that might easily bolt. Erik's mind flickers with amusement at the comparison.

Erik's nostrils flare as he tightens his jaw against the irritation that surges; because surely it is _obvious_ that he has no desire to enter police custody, and it is worse because, evidently, Xavier _does_ know this. He does not answer. Xavier doesn't seem to require one, talking all the answers from Erik's face as he drains the last of his coffee.

(He leaves the dregs, Erik notes, a small pool of black liquid settling in the base of the cup, shifting lightly over the granules that lie there. The scent drifts around him, mingling bitter and dark with the watery saltiness of the broth he's just drank and the soft, warm earthiness of the bread that still remains on the tray, crust cracked and oozing crumbs to mingle with the baked, browned flour. He concentrates of the scents because it detracts from the emotions that rage through his system, flipping him from one to another as if controlled by a set of railway points, still powerful from his recent change.)

Placing the cup and saucer back onto the tray with the delicate, distinctive _chink_ of bone china, Xavier braces his hands on the arms of his chair and pushes himself upright.

"Let's take a look at these cuts, then," he says. His hands, warm from the cup and firm on his skin. There is no ulterior motive to his touch, mere direction to move Erik where he needs in order to unwind the bandages; it reminds Erik of the nurses in the camps, and of nothing like that at all, at the same time. He feels Xavier's hands still, his fingertips just brushing the skin covering his shoulder blades, and Erik tenses instinctively.

"Well," says Xavier, after a moment's pause. "You certainly have an impressive metabolism, Erik."

Erik glances sideways, catches sight of the wounds on his shoulder; they are reasonably recent, but you would not know it to see them. Already, the skin has begun to knit back over them, although it is still thin and fragile. Erik can feel the pull as his muscles shift, deliberately keeping him still beneath Xavier's scrutiny. They could be weeks old, rather than merely days. He awaits Xavier's reaction.

"I suppose that must come in handy," Xavier says, lightly, "if you often get into fights with –" Erik can feel him measuring the width and length of the cuts, his fingers once more sure and solid against Erik's skin (but careful nonetheless, not pressing roughly against the wounds or twisting Erik into position with harsh movements) "a bear?"

The puzzlement is evident in his voice, but so is amusement at his own conclusion. There is smiling around his eyes and the angle of his head as he steps back into Erik's field of vision.

"Well," he says, roughly bundled the bandages into a ball and tossing them into the bin, "I'm no doctor and you know your body far better than I, but you're more than welcome to stay for as long as you like."

Erik replays that over in his head, trying to find indication of intention, of anything that he recognises, something he can use as an reason to leave. Try as he might, he can't find anything hidden. It galls him, and shifts the ground beneath his feet.

Prudency.

 _Vorsichtigkeit_.

He has always considered himself a prudent man. _Vernünftig_. Not trusting anyone or anything is something that Erik has always been good at; something he can hardly help being good at, considering. An attitude that has kept him alive for almost as long as he has been out of the camps (because no one bothered him in the camps. He was Schmidt's _Haustier_ ; and the guards called him _das Fleischwolf_. Schmidt approved of the nickname. Erik had long since lost the ability to care) and one that he does not care to lose.

There had been occasions, of course, when all he wanted in all the world was someone to talk to, someone that would not spurn him or cast him out or flay him when he didn't do as he was told; and, when he was rather much younger, he had indulged himself.

And then he had learned another important lesson; one that Schmidt had not specifically focused on because, in his vision for the future, why was the any need? When you are like Erik, when fire and ice and bloodlust thrum in your bones, with the all-encompassing hunger pressing into-out of his skin and all it takes is for the moon to brush her beautiful, silver face across it to call the demons from your soul and change your flesh; when you are like Erik, people whom you get close to invariably end up dead. Normally, because he eats them.

Magda, as much as he had wanted to believe otherwise, had been no exception.

And yet, despite _all_ that he has learned, he wakes after a particularly rough change in a stranger's bed, with no memory of how he had become to be there. This was the most worrying thing of all; because Schmidt had trained his mind to recall his actions when in wolf form, even if his human mind had no control over it; because what good was a hunting dog, a tracking dog, if it couldn't tell him what he wanted to know in the morning?

He scowls at his feet, long and pale against the darkwood flooring, gritting his teeth against the wave of weakness-induced nausea that threatened to overtake his body. Xavier, it seems has remembered his tact and made himself scarce, allowing Erik to fight against his body's better instincts in rather less embarrassment.

Even though he is now alone in the room, and Xavier had left no instructions before leaving, Erik can hear the thud-and-pulse of the plumbing as it rolled into life, and the booming wash of water being run into something large and deep. He can smell it too, all of his senses still heightened from the change; the convection current carrying the fresh, empty scent that typifies soft water with a coppery undertone that Erik does not understand. It flows through the house on air displaced by steam, bringing with it the scent of dust and bergamot and quiet, half-lit rooms.

He follows the sound and the smell, and finds himself in a bathroom larger than many of the apartments that he has lived in. Xavier is leaning over a large, burnished bathtub, the beaten copper gleaming dully in the cloud-shrouded daylight that swarmed in through the long windows.

"I don't know how hot you like it," he says, without turning around, "but I'm inclined to believe that too hot would melt all your wonderful healing." Turning off the taps with firm, even twists, he pushes himself upright on the roll-top lip of the bath and turns to face Erik, smiling. "So, if you like your water scalding, I'm afraid you're just going to have to wait."

Erik stares at him. Charles, seeing his bewildered expression, laughs a little, although not unkindly.

"You've just spent that past three days lying cocooned in your own sweat," he says. "Fever sweat, at that. I'm sure everyone would benefit from an improvement on your current state of hygiene."

Looking away from Xavier and down at the bathtub, where the steaming water traces whirls in its surface and carries with it the sense memory of _soothingsoakingwarm_ ; and a bath would certainly loosen the aches that Erik can feel knotted against his spine.

He pushes his fingers against the waistband of his trousers, knocking them down over his hips (Xavier makes himself scare with remarkable alacrity) and stepping out of them on unsteady feet, before lowering himself carefully into the water.

Despite Xavier's comments about temperature, it is still hot and Erik hisses internally as it stings against his wounds; he tenses, momentarily, before deliberately relaxing his muscles one by one, starting with his toes and moving upwards towards his neck. The water flowed around him, sliding into all the creases of his skin and washing away the gritty feeling of old, dried sweat; the heat seeping steadily into his muscles and working hot fingers against the collected lactic acid.

He doesn't relax completely, remains on his guard with his senses twitching as he hears Xavier pottering about further along the floor, and he is still in a stranger's house. He still doesn't know why Xavier is helping him. But he accepts the luxury of the moment, and wraps it up tight in his memories for him to access at a later date, when curling into a corner against the cold that rips through his clothing.

 

"Right," Charles says, pausing in the middle of the hallway with the bathroom door firmly closed at his back. "Clothes. He can't keep wandering around in just trousers. They are, if nothing else, entirely filthy." He determinedly doesn't think about how Erik had almost shucked his last remaining piece of clothing with Charles standing in front of him, and gnaws instead on the inside of his lower lip.

Where is he to get clothing to fit? Erik is easily a head taller than Charles, with a rather different build to match, so his own clothes are out of the question. Frowning, he looks about him, hoping the walls will offer forth some inspiration.

 _Kurt's clothing_ , he thinks. It'd still all be in his damn wardrobe; he has yet to have the inclination to got through it all. Lined up neat and organised and so bloody perfect next to his mother's expensive gowns and day dresses and pearls.

 _No_ , he decides, pushing back against the wad on unwanted emotion at the memory. _Attic._

 

It still galls him that his mother consigned all of his father's belongings to the attic when she had remarried; had the staff pack an entire life into boxes and move it out-of-sight and out-of-mind. Charles hadn't been particularly close to his father, but that was more because his father didn’t really like people. Charles had only been a child when he died, and would have only been a distraction. He likes to think, though, that he would have been considered less of an annoyance by his father than by his mother.

The attic is huge and winding, just like the rest of the mansion; filled with dust-sheeted grandfather clocks and portraits of long-dead ancestors whom everyone had long-forgotten their relationship to; everything covered in a thick layer of dust. Everything apart from one corner, where the dust lies a little thinner than the rest of the room; where Charles can look down at the large, dark chest and still see the engraving.

 _Brian Xavier._

He rubs his thumb over the name, feeling the grooves under his skin, and tries to summon an emotion that is more than a sort of abstract indifference. He doesn't succeed, and tosses open the lid.

 

"Erik?" he calls through the door. He knocks, carefully balancing the bundle of clothing in his arms as he raps a knuckle against the wood. "I've brought you some clothes. Are you finished?"

"Yes," he hears in response, and it is with only a little trepidation that he pushes the door open, leaning his shoulder into it. Erik, however, is standing with a towel wrapped around his waist, the bathwater steadily draining. The heat from the water has brought the still-healing wounds across his upper torso out in stark, scarlet relief against the rest of his skin.

"I hope these fit," Charles says, handing the bundle over. "I'm afraid I've never been the best judge of clothes size."

"Thank you," Erik said, running his thumb over the cloth in a manner that would have been discrete if Charles hadn't been paying attention. Charles smiles.

"You’re most welcome," he says. "I'll just be outside whilst you change."

 

"Now," Charles says, leaning back against the worktop with his hands wrapped around a mug of tea, "I'm not going to ask how you ended up bleeding in my kitchen. But –" his eyes latch onto Erik's, and it feels distinctly uncomfortable, like he is seeing too much – "are you in any trouble, Erik? Is there anything that I can do?"

"You've already done more than most would," Erik remarks, drily. Charles fixes him with another searching, knowing look, and Erik bites down on the urge to snarl and rip his throat out.

"It would be nice to know if there's a dangerous, wild animal wandering my grounds," Charles says, and Erik almost laughs at the irony. Almost.

"No," he confirms, "you have no dangerous, wild animals wandering your grounds." _Just the one sitting in your kitchen_ , he adds, internally.

Charles watches him for few moments more, before breaking his gaze to take a long swig of tea. Erik lifts his own cup to his lips, inhaling the steam (Earl Grey, loose leaf; bought in bulk and left in storage, because Erik can taste the dust at the back of his nose) and looking down at the leaves twisting at the bottom of his mug, slowly swelling as they diffuse their flavour into the hot water.

He takes a cautious sip as Charles lowers his own cup.

"Well," Charles says, "that's a relief. And now, Erik," he cocks his head, smiling at Erik, "how're you feeling?"

Erik shrugs, one shoulder moving more freely than the other, movements still constricted by the stretching of healing skin.

"Fine," he says. "Better."

"That's something, then." Charles is still smiling. In Erik's experience, people who smile as much as Charles are using it to hide behind.

"Why are you helping me?" he asks, suddenly, raising his gaze and determinedly pinning Charles with it.

"I already told you," Charles says, deflecting.

"No," Erik argues; "you told me that you don't understand the concept of prudency."

Charles grins. "I did, didn't I?" He rubs his chin with his free hand, looking around the kitchen. He laughs, short and sharp and unexpected, and looks back to Erik. "I get so very lonely," he says, the amusement in his eyes derisive and directed only at himself, "in this ridiculous house. There's only the sodding gardener for company, and I'm fairly sure I'd rather chop off my own foot."

"You wanted a pet," Erik says, his voice flat and anger rising through his bones, threatening to overtake his vision.

Charles is shaking his head, still with that bitter self-deprecation behind his eyes. "No," he says, "no, and I'm sorry. That's not what I meant at all; and I do understand why you'd think that, but –" He stops, sighs, and takes another mouthful of tea. Erik is fighting down the surge of anger, because he's still probably strong enough to shatter the table he is sitting at, fever or no.

"I wanted someone to talk to," Charles continues, after a moment. "And you certainly weren't going anywhere; and I'm almost one hundred percent sure that you didn't want me to call an ambulance." He meets Erik's gaze, then, and Erik knows that he gleans all that he needs to know from Erik's face.

"You wanted a pet," Erik says, again.

"I wanted a friend," Charles corrects. "I'm sorry that I've upset you, Erik; but unless you want to have the police involved by taking a trip to the hospital, you really aren't going anywhere, at least for the next few days."

"I'm not a pet," Erik says, unable to move past _Haustier_ and _Fleishwolf_. "You can't keep me. You can't make me stay."

"No," Charles says. "But I would very much like you to."

"No," Erik says, "you don’t."

"Erik." Charles leans forward, the lines of his body reading intent and certain. "I have never met someone more interesting that you in my entire life, and I would be honoured if you would allow me the opportunity to get to know you better."

They lock gazes, and Erik means to fight him on this, but he is just so _tired_ , from the walking around this rabbit warren of a home and from squashing down the wolf that wanted to tear everything and feast on its remains.

His head gets caught up on _I wanted a friend_ , and he can't help but think how nice that would be.

 

Time passes, as is its wont. Erik heals (of course he heals, he always heals, keeps the story of his life written into his skin), far faster than Charles clearly is expecting; he doesn't mention it again, however. Erik cannot decide whether he's pretending it isn't happening, or whether he feels that Erik is sensitive about the subject. He isn't entirely certain about how he feels concerning either event.

Time passes, and Erik heals. Erik heals, and he should leave. Instead, Erik stays.

It is all too easy to fall into a strange sense of routine around Charles, who seems to have sucked Erik into his orbit and is steadily pulling him closer and deeper into his strange, lonely life in his huge, empty house. He's given the run of the place (Charles explains that he is used to spending most of his time confined to the west wing, where the library is situated, so the rest of the house is largely unused); but everything is tidied away and covered up, and the house feels markedly sad, and more than a little forbidding. The walls and floors are dark, hard wood, the glossy sheen adding to the solemn feel. It feels odd, walking the labyrinth of corridors with only the click of his heels for company.

So, he spends most of his time with Charles. He doesn't seem to mind; in fact, despite his insistence that he tends to while away the days with the endless collection of books that the house boasts, Charles is almost eager for the company.

He walked Erik around the entire house, once, explaining the histories behind each of the features as if it were something that he had learned by rote. The knowledge of his ancestral home had evidently been embedded into his brain at an early age, and Erik could sense the distaste wafting from him for much of the tour.

"How do you never get lost?" he asked, once, when Charles lead him through a narrow corridor and they found themselves in a large, open room, wide and circular and almost definitely designed for entertaining.

"I did, when I was very young," Charles said. "It would take me hours to find my way back to my room."

He didn't elaborate, and Erik didn't press. It isn't as though Charles has any real feelings of hostility towards the house; but there is a definite sense of melancholy. Erik can taste it in the stale air of the unused portions, in the way that the ostentatious portraits of Xaviers gone by seem to be watching him as he passes. It is a sensation that he finds difficult to place: whether it is Charles projecting on the house, or the house affecting Charles.

He stays in the room that Charles originally put him in, for simplicity's sake. Every evening, he lies on the alien bed, feeling entirely out of place on duck feather mattresses and heavy linen sheets; he thinks of leaving the following day. He makes the decision, every night, to leave first thing in the morning, to slip quietly out of the door and disappear from Charles' life – because it is the best thing to do. And every morning, he wakes and finds himself thinking _just one more day_.

They play chess. Charles has an ancient, ornate set, with intricately carved ivory pieces inlaid with gold and tiny, perfect emeralds; it sits in a cupboard in the study adjoining Charles' bedroom, and they play instead with his childhood set. The board is wooden and varnished, the grain of the different shades of wood set at symmetrical angles to one another; the pieces are heavy, stained iron that grow warm beneath Erik's fingers as he rolls them, considering his next move.

He goes to sleep every night with the self-made promise of leaving in the morning; and awakens every day to the thought of _one more. Just one more day_.

One more day turns into an endless cycle of chess and chores – assisting Charles with opening up the west wing into something more habitable and less sad, clearing out the rooms of dust sheets and leaving windows wide open to draw out the dry air. They roll together, one slipping mindlessly into another as if there is never an option of things changing, of them going back to how they were.

He loses track of time.

 

The evening rain had cleared the air, but Charles is still finding it difficult to sleep. The sense of _ennui_ that he normally associates with oppressive summer heat has wrapped its fingers around his stomach, settling into his bones with a restless ache that has him tossing between the sheets, unable to find a comfortable position. Thinking it might help settle him, he decides to take a walk; not outside, of course, because everything is still shiny and wet, and the last touch of rain lingers as a mist in the air that Charles can see pressing against his window pane.

Instead, he pads barefoot around the mansion's corridors, meandering with vague intent towards the kitchens with the thought of taking a cup of camomile and a cigarette.

The house, as always, is quiet; the lack of sound is amplified by the long, echoing hallways that spread in infinite darkness before him, the soft sound of his footsteps twisted and absorbed and thrown back at him in weird shapes. But Charles is used to the idiosyncrasies of his familial home, knows to ignore the odd shapes that banister rails and busts throw against the walls, learned to push past the prickle of imagined fear that his imagination creates at the back of his mind. There is no one else in the house; there is nothing here that can hurt him.

 _Now, Charlie_ , said Kurt, _we both know **that's** not true_.

Charles bites down hard on the thrum of fear that spikes up his spine at the sound of his dead step-father's voice inside his head. The hairs on his nape prickle, lifting horizontal to his skin as goosebumps erupt along his arms.

 _You're not real_ , he tells his imagination. _So stop it, now, you ridiculous fool._

 _Don't be like that, Charlie_ , Kurt says, his voice mocking, a flash of memory imprinting his smirking face on the back of Charles' vision.

 _Go. Away_ , Charles thinks, firmly. _I am not a child. I will not be frightened of my own house by my imagination._

Still, it takes a conscious effort not to increase his pace, and he finds himself determinedly looking straight-ahead as paranoia stabs at the small of his back.

 _Behind you_ , Kurt's voice says, sing-song, and Charles curses his over-active imagination, stimulated too much too early and now allowing figments to run amok all over his brain. He can feel Kurt's voice's continuation pressing at the underside of his consciousness, and he pushes it savagely down _coming to get you_.

He exits the corridor with an evident increase in pace, and stops in the atrium; the large windows letting what little light from the cloud-covered sky drip in over the wide space. Charles presses a hand to the small of his back, cursing inwardly. He still doesn't look over his shoulder, despite the fact that he _knows_ that no one is there; because if there _is_ , then seeing them will make them real. Provoke them. Whatever.

 _Look out_ , Kurt's voice whispers. _Look out, look out, there's a madman about._

It is the rhyme that the boys in Charles' dorm used to hiss at one another after lights-out, when the old building would creak and sigh around them.

 _He's creeping along; he's at your bed –_

"Shut up," Charles hisses, his voice too loud in the quiet of the house. The disturbance jolts him, and he bites the inside of his lip to control the clawing of childhood terrors that wish to send him hurtling back to his room, to hide under the covers as if they offer impervious protection against the horrors that lie waiting in the dark.

And, in answer, a very different sound.

It slips up from behind the staircase, delicate and incongruous and sliding over Charles' skin like ice: the sound of padded, heavy footfalls, coming slowly and inconsistently closer to the atrium floor.

 _Imagination, imagination, imagination_ , Charles thinks, desperately, chidingly; until his entire brain slams to a halt as a long shadow moves up out of the dark block thrown across the ground by the wall. He stares at it, unable to rationalise its presence with the constant overlay of the rhyme running around and around his mind, interweaving with his thoughts and destroying all potential for reasonable explanations.

 _Look out, look out: there's a madman about.  
He's creeping along; he's at your bed;  
He can't wait to see you bled.  
You cannot run: your legs he'll cut  
And your eyelids will stitch tight shut.  
And when he's done, he'll eat your heart,  
And flay your body right apart.  
Look out, look out: there's a madman about;  
He's in your house, he's in your house._

Charles can barely hear over his own rapid heartbeats, and his breath seems caught in his chest; but he can hear breathing from down below: snuffling and heavy. Questing. Scenting.

He can see it now; it has stepped out from the shadows beneath the stairs and Charles is frozen, unable to move or speak or cry out.

 _Something very tall and very black and very thin._

It isn't even human: its face drags outwards, elongated into a muzzle; there are pointed ears, angled back along its skull. It stands taller than a man, with hands that end in claws and legs that bend in three places, the ankle too far up the leg. It balances on two legs, as a man; but it walks on its toes. Like a dog.

 _Look out, look out_ , Kurt whispers in Charles' ear, and his brain is so saturated with fear that he can almost feel his breath on Charles' skin; _there's a wolfman about_.

Slowly, the beast turns its head to gaze up at Charles, two storeys above. He finds himself pinned by a pale gaze, the iris lit from the side by a sudden stab of moonlight through the cloud cover; in the new light, Charles can see the beast's lips curl back in a snarl, revealing large, glistening, pointed teeth. The moonlight highlights the tensing and shifting of the muscles in the beast's legs, and Charles' lungs leap into his throat as he recognises the contractions from watching the sprinters at school sports events.

The beast springs forward at the stairs, and Charles flees, running pell-mell down corridors, as far away from the atrium as he can.

 _Run!_ his mind screams at him, a cacophony of voices clanging inside his head. _Run!_

In his blind haste, bare feet slapping against the wood with almost painful force, Charles forgets about the rug in the hallway before him. He catches his foot in it, throwing himself forward and skidding, rolling. He can feel his skin burning as the coarse fabric tears at it, can feel the ache beginning in his ankle from where he fell. The weight of his body and the impact of his fall drags the rug with him across the floor, so it does nothing to prevent his slamming into the wall.

Charles, momentarily stunned, lies panting against the wall, the rug bunched around his legs and back. A snarl and roar echo down the corridor, and Charles' breath falls out of him in a sob as he rolls over and pushes himself upright, casting about for the best way to go.

He can hear it approaching, now that he isn't running; heavy footfalls surrounded by the clack of claws against wood and a deep, continuous growl that vibrates against Charles' skin and paralyses his mind.

He can hear it, just around the corner, just through the last doorway –

 _The dumb waiter_. He can see the entrance to it, the slight change in the panelling where he pushes and the door slides back. Staggering, almost tripping over the bunched rug and his own feet, Charles runs over to it, slams his shoulder into the wood and prays that the box is waiting behind it.

The footsteps have stopped. Charles can hear the beast sniffing, scenting him out as he scrambles headfirst into the dumb waiter and desperately kicks the door closed behind him.

As it slides shut, he catches a glimpse of the savage, wolfish face at the far end of the corridor, teeth bared and eyes glinting in the darkness. The beast charges the wall; Charles can hear it coming, and he violently tugs the ropes that control the waiter so that it rises, pulling himself upwards towards the next floor.

The wood splinters as the door reopens, forced backwards by the strength of the beast – it isn't designed to open unless the waiter is behind it; they had too many accidents with the long, deep shafts before then – and Charles pulls faster, his hands getting caught up in each other in his haste. He expects to hear a roar, a snarl; hell, even howling. But what he hears instead sounds eerily, horrifically, like laughter. Followed by the dull _snick_ of the rope being cut.

Charles screams as he falls.

His mind distances itself from him, leaving a pulsing, ringing white noise pressing against the backs of his eyes and a strange numbness in his limbs.

 _An out of body experience_ , he thinks, with the part of his mind that is hovering over his left shoulder, watching the skin flay off the palms of his hands with a calm, detached curiosity. _Fascinating_.

He can feel the rope shredding the skin from his palms, can register the fact that coarse weave is slicing deeper and deeper into his hands and that it's _his_ blood lubricating it, that the rope is tearing at his fingernails, breaking them into ragged splinters; but the pain is strangely distant, pummelling futilely against the tinnitus that is fogging his brain. All of his senses seem dulled; which is odd, because he is certain that fear is meant to enhance one's senses in order to prepare for fight-or-flight.

 _Completely pathetic_ , Kurt says, joining his mind on his left shoulder. _Almost every other creature has that instinct. What are you, a possum?_

The waiter shudders as the safety tries to kick in; the rubber brakes lining the sides of the shaft grip and shriek as he tumbles past them, the clamps attempting to slow his descent before he hits free-fall.

 _Well_ , says Kurt, _at least **something** is working as it should. Which is more than I can say for you, my lad_.

There is a section two feet below the final opening in the shaft that is designed as a point of no return: a thick band of chalked rubber fastened through the walls with four-inch long steel spikes, followed by a wire net pulled taut half a foot below. This final brake causes the shaft to become slightly too small for the waiter to pass though, and is supposed to clench the box tight enough so that it can come to rest on the netting. However, depending on the weight and the speed of falling, it is entirely possible that the waiter will crash straight through the rubber band and through the netting; in this case, both are designed in order to slow the waiter enough so that, when it comes to its final stop at the base of the shaft, a further five feet below, the box itself would not crumple and kill any persons within.

Charles knows the exact moment when the waiter hits this final brake, because the whole box jolts. The movement slams him upwards and forwards, smacking his head into the roof of the waiter and hurling him back into his own skin. He feels the deceleration further when it meets the netting: the metal bends, bows, and breaks beneath the force of the waiter, and the metal screams against the walls as he falls the final distance.

The waiter crashes into the shaft floor with the sound of popping welds and shattering wood, and a single, searing pain just above his right knee. He cannot gather enough breath to scream, and instead pants ragged, wet sobs as he reaches down and touches a long, damp splinter that has pierced the side of his thigh.

He can taste bad coffee at the back of his mouth, a strange, harsh scent-taste behind his nose; it is only after he swipes his tongue across his lips and tastes hot, rich copper that he realises that it is blood. He cannot remember when he hit his nose hard enough to make it bleed, but the scientist in him hopes that it is the result of a direct impact, and not some internal injury. He really doesn't want to die at the bottom of a lift shaft.

He forces the roof of the waiter open, and struggles upright. The shaft is entirely dark; the kind of all-encompassing blackness that feels like a physical entity, wrapping long fingers around his arms and rubbing the hairs upright so that goosebumps prickle across his skin. He cannot see anything, not the walls around him, not the opening above him, not his hand in front of his face. Panic grips the back of his throat, and despair leeches over his brain stem.

 _I can't do it_ , he thinks. _I'm stuck_.

 _For God's sake, Charles_ , his mother says, irritation carrying down through years and memories. It still hurts. _You're not a **child**. Stop whining; you're making a scene._

 _I am not a child_ , he repeats to himself. _I am thirty fucking years old. I am a grown man, and I am not afraid_.

He doesn't pull the splinter out; he cannot see it, and would most likely cause more damage that he would prevent. The wood drags and pulls with rough edges at the inside of his leg, sending electric sparks of pain up Charles' spine that narrow his vision and make him feel light-headed.

Even standing on top of the ruined waiter, he is still too short to reach the edges of the opening; briefly, he considers staying. Surely the shaft is too narrow for that – thing to follow him down here. The thought dances around the edges of his consciousness, teasing and tempting, but he clamps down on it. A dangerous, _intelligent_ animal is loose in his home, on his grounds; he has no way of contacting any form of authority more equipped to deal with it. This is his responsibility.

No one knows his house better than him; Charles spent a great deal of his childhood in boarding schools on the other side of the world, but there were many long, lonely holidays in which he had nothing better to do than discover every secret of this vast, winding house that was to be his inheritance. He takes a half-step forward, his leg bent at the knee as his bare toes slide into the carefully-cut foothold in the side of the shaft. He braces himself, palms flat against the wall and fingers gripping tight into the holes above him, and raises his injured leg.

Pain flares, bright and clear and Charles sways, his fingers slipping. He catches himself before he can fall, however, and pushes the bliss of unconsciousness away. Blood curls around his mouth, fresh and hot; he has bitten his tongue. He blinks, once, the only allowance he will permit to pain and fear, and the tears wash lines through the crusted blood on his face.

He climbs.

 

The cut-outs lead directly to the opening in the basement – the kitchens, more precisely – having been built for maintenance work and in the rare occasion that someone might become trapped at the bottom of the shaft. Their existence is written into the official blueprints of the mansion, and is a piece of information dictated to every new member of staff that enters the household.

What isn't on the plans is the fact that they continue farther than the opening. At three feet below the opening, just below the ragged remainder of the steel netting, Charles shifts his grip carefully and takes one step to the left. He has to raise his foot in order to find the hole, but that is only to be expected; the last time he climbed this wall, he was ten years old.

He has almost entirely resorted to hauling himself up to the next hole by his arms alone; the repeated pressure on his leg is making him shake and sweat, which is hardly helpful, especially considering that he was currently seven feet above a tangled mess of iron and wood with no way of stopping himself if he fell. Breathing in sharp pants that hiss through his teeth, he pulls himself higher.

Next to the opening, he pauses. He can hear no sound from the kitchens, cannot even smell the heavy, wet musk that he associates with dogs. It could still be there, though, waiting on the other side of the wall, listening to Charles listening to it.

 _Unhelpful_ , he chides himself. _Good God, man. It's a wonder you ever get anything done_.

He climbs higher.

 

There are several places throughout the mansion where the wall cavities are accessible from the outside by methods other than the official duct system; rather more than Charles' teenage self thought viable for security reasons. There are a few, most notably in the basement and on the second floor, that lead into the hidden tunnels that the Xaviers of previous centuries had used in the underground railroad. The network is long and twisting, and Charles only knows a small portion of it. As a child, he had used gypsy signs to prevent him getting lost as he explored under the pretext of 'keeping out of the way'.

One of these rather more illicit entrances into the space between the walls opens into the lift shaft; Charles hasn't figured out whether this was accidental, that the builders forged through the walls when they sank the shaft, or whether it was designed as such. The placing of the hand holds implies the latter, but Charles supposes that they could have been carved in once the gap was discovered.

For his ten-year-old self, it hadn't been difficult to fit himself into the gap; but Charles is no longer a child, and even though he cannot be considered a big man in any sense, it is a far tighter fit that he remembers. His breath is coming in short, heavy gasps through his nose as he finally worms his way over the jagged lip and into the gap, fingers scrabbling ahead of him for some form of grip, to haul his lower body up after him.

A long moment passes as Charles lies there, feet still dangling over the edge of the passage. The thick layer of dust mingles with the sheen of sweat covering his face and lingers in his breath; it tangles in the creases around his eyes, stirred into movement by the exhausted fluttering of his eyelashes. He tries to formulate a plan, but whenever his brain meets the fact that there is an apparently preternatural (he refuses, _refuses_ supernatural) being wandering his halls, it slithers over it as though the concept is inimical to the touch. Even when he thinks in the extremist hypothetical, he still gets stuck on the simple fact of what it _is_.

He can feel the pricklings of despondent despair at the back of his eyes, and the damp touch of tears gathering against the dust below his face. He screws his eyes tight shut against it, and forces himself to his feet.

 _Can't stay here, crying in the dark like a baby_ , he thinks, gritting his teeth against the pain in his leg. _Got to be up and doing. Only way about it_.

 

It's a long, slow journey through the walls of the house, Charles limping sideways down the narrow passageways and clambering inelegantly up the inside to reach a higher floor. But, eventually, he stops, pauses, and tries to visualise the interior of the house. If he's got it right – and it has been an _awfully_ long time since he's done this sort of thing, then he should be opposite Cain's childhood bedroom. Just a matter of finding the way into it –

His toe snags on something left on the ground near the wall; he bends down, as much as he is able, and carefully gropes for it. Something wooden, and poorly carved, but Charles recognises it as a wooden stake, one that could be driven into the mortar; which would imply that his guess was almost entirely wrong. There is no other reason that such a thing should be here, inside the walls, except if it is one of Charles' markers for important rooms: the rooms he should not enter.

The entrance through the wall is a few steps ahead of him, and awkward to fit himself through mostly because it is set low down, and he is forced to wiggle through it on his stomach. It is still very dark, and there are no lamps on for Charles to view the room by; but his night vision has fully kicked in by this point, and he recognises the room even without the aid of light. Father's study.

Carefully, quietly, he moves around the heavy, ornate oak desk to stand next to the imposing leather chair behind it; he never came in here, not even when his father was alive. The only times he was ever permitted entrance was when Father had directly requested his presence, usually to test him on something complicated that he felt Charles' should know and understand. Charles rarely did.

 _Just because you don't understand something_ , Father would say, when Charles would get aggravated and tearful at not being able to answer, _doesn't mean it's not real. Now, Charles; ignore what you've been taught, and tell me what you **see**_.

Charles squeezes the back of the chair, one hand tightening briefly over the ancient leather before letting go. He steps around the desk and over to the far side of the room; wrapping his fingers around the reassuringly cool and solid handle of the poker, he hefts the weight in one hand and heads into the adjoining bathroom. He needs to do something about his leg.

 

The bathroom hasn't been used for a long as the study; Kurt, when he moved in, used a different room on the other side of the house. Charles doubts it was out of deference to his father's memory. Even so, there are still linens in the cupboard and scissors in the cabinet, and Charles has never been more grateful for a bathroom without windows as he flicks on the shaving light and looks down at his leg.

The sight of it, with blood staining his pajama leg a dark rust-brown, and the savage point of the splinter sticking out through it, sends a wave of faintness up his body like a spreading wash of numbness; his vision narrows dramatically, fogging at the edges and making him blink hard. He opens his eyes to the feel of cold enamel under his hand and relief to find himself still upright. Biting down on the drag of unconciousness, he fumbles the cap from the medicinal alcohol and takes a long pull. Then, he wraps his fingers around the bloodied end of the splinter, and tugs it free.

He bites through his lip, tears of pain and shock gathering and falling; they are only joined by new ones when he splashes the alcohol over the wound with a shaking hand. Deep, shuddering breaths, and Charles cuts away the fabric sticking to the wound, soaked free from his skin by the alcohol. The gauze dressing stings as he puts it on, the filaments catching at the raw edges of his skin as he presses down on it. Carefully but firmly binding it in strips of linen, Charles delicately tests it. It hurts, but not as much as before he removed the splinter, and blood does not immediately soak through the bandage; so he counts this as a win.

Next thing: identify where the beast is.

 _One step at a time_ , he thinks. _Break down the problem into sections that make sense._

He switches off the light and steps back into the study, standing with the door to the bathroom at his back as his night vision reasserts itself. Flexing his grip on the poker handle, he heads out of the door and into the dark corridor.

Will he be able to bank of the element of surprise? If he assumes that the beast deliberately cut the rope knowing it would send Charles hurtling to his death, is it logical to assume that it has figured out his continued survival? And, assuming its intelligence, should he consider himself to still be hunted?

Charles pads through the night-filled corridors of his home, mind flitting over chess strategies for capturing the queen and the stalking sessions of his youth, tracking deer through the woods of the estate. He knows how to move silently, how to position his body so that the shadows conceal him even when he isn't within them, how to hunt a wily creature through its own terrain.

He had even seen a wolf, once; just a lone one, perhaps a scout, although Charles hadn't thought so at the time. To him, squinting down the sights of his hunting rifle, the wolf looked too broad and powerful to take a position in a pack any lower than beta. Besides, the estate didn't have any wolf packs – they were forced off the grounds by the keepers, headed off back towards Canada. The thrill of seeing it was a mix of fear and enraptured adrenaline that smacked him in the gut and behind his eyes, sharpening and defocusing his vision simultaneously, leaving him with a giddy headrush that had him grinning helplessly to himself when lying in the dark that night.

When his guide (Charles would always, _always_ think of them as 'handlers') had seen the wolf as well, he'd taken one look at Charles and touched his shoulder with two fingers; _I understand_ , it said, _I know how you feel_.

Charles had never had anyone to share something like that with before. It's a novel experience.

So, he's not entirely at the disadvantage. Certainly, he's injured, almost entirely inequipped, and is up against a creature that is just as intelligent as any human opponent with the added bonus of heightened senses and whatever other animalistic traits it possesses. Completely outclassed by his opponent. But Charles has one advantage. Hunted he may be, but this is _his_ home, where not even the servants knew all of the hidden passageways and blocked-up rooms. This is his trump card, and he's damned if he isn't going to exploit every last piece of it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles scowls at the corridor, feeling the twist and build of rage at the base of his ribcage, spreading through his stomach and clenching in his gut, clawing its way up his trachea like heartburn. He can feel the pressings of exhaustion around the fringes of his mind, creeping fingers sliding cool over his head as the adrenaline ebbed. He pushes his anger up in its place, barricading out Adenosine and feelings of despair.
> 
>  _Battle's almost here, boys. Now's the time to get angry._

_Second advantage_ , Charles thinks, his foot catching slightly on the carpet with each step, the constant stab of pain helping to keep his brain clear; _I'm not actually alone_. Not that he can imagine Erik believing him about the fact that there is some preternaturally intelligent, bipedal wolf running loose about the mansion, but Charles is certain that he would believe that a dangerous intruder is somewhere in the house. Despite his apparent emotional constipation, Erik comes across as very _capable_ , and Charles would feel infinitely better about the whole situation if he had company.

And, even if Erik decides to ignore Charles and remain in his room, at least Charles will have warned him.

The thing about the Xavier mansion is that there is no section of any floor that can only be reached by one staircase; not even the kitchens, because there was the entrance into them from the main house as well as the servants' entrance. He pauses immediately before an adjoining corridor, trying to push out his senses to detect any threat hidden in the shadows. There was no sounds beyond the rapid tattoo of his heart against his rips and the murmur of the wind against the glass.

He turns the corner and cautiously makes his way down it, ears and eyes straining for anything suspicious or out of place. The poker he keeps half-raised at his shoulder, the hook facing forwards.

 _Does the most damage that way_ , Cain said, a memory flashing across Charles' mind of him smirking and swinging the poker too close to the side of Charles' face. _Hit someone with this side, and you could take off their face._

Erik's bedroom door is open, moonlight filtering across the hallway. Charles could see it, a smooth spill of paler darkness in the pitch of the house; the slight changes in texture as the curtains shift against the light. It should have been his first clue that something isn't right, but he is still forced to bite down nausea and the ice-cold clenching of his stomach as he looks in at the room.

It is completely wrecked. The bed has been torn apart; mattress, duvet and pillows slashed and feathers settling idly on every surface. The frame is scored by deep, even gouges, visible by their depth into the wood even in the half-light; the bedside lamp lies in pieces of the floor, the wire sparking quietly to itself. Further scarring of the walls and carpet leads to the window, as if something was trying to get out. Blood is everywhere, the stench hitting him in the roof of his mouth and dragging his gag reflex up his throat; cold and congealing on the floor, so it is tacky underfoot, sticking to Charles' sole as he moves.

 _Right_ , he thinks, _back to one advantage, then_.

He determinedly doesn't think about the angry, frightened man that he adopted into his life over the past month; refuses to remember the slow way that Erik had begun to smile, genuine smiles that crease his cheeks and flicker light behind his eyes. _Act now, grieve later_ , he thinks, and flexes his grip on the poker.

He had bound both his hands and the poker handle itself before leaving the bathroom, a task made doubly difficult due to the abused nature of his palms and the fact that blood kept soaking the make-shift bandage before he could wrap it. Even with this, he can feel the heavy press of the bandage against the poker beginning to stick as blood seeps through the linen.

Cold sweat begins to form at the back of his neck as he approaches the main staircase, counterpoint to the hot, viscous spread of blood on his leg and hands. He takes deep, slow breaths through his nose, willing himself calm so he can _think_ – he needs to trap it somewhere, somewhere that has an immediate escape route that it cannot follow him through.

And to do _that_ , he'll need to lure it after him.

He walks slowly and as silently as he can (he doesn't forget the most important thing that he learned when stalking: man is the loudest thing in the forest, because he doesn't realise he is) along the landing, tilting and turning his head as if it will allow him to see around corners and up adjacent corridors. There is nothing: no sounds, no whispers of movement, no sudden pounding, crushing death.

As he reaches the top of the staircase, he feels a prickle along his spine, and all the hairs on his nape stand on end, like someone had just run their fingernail up his back. His nostrils flare, and for a long moment he is paralysed by fear and the certain knowledge that it is _right there_. He turns his head.

The corridor almost opposite the head of the stairs is wide and long, and the far end is taken up almost entirely by a large, plate glass window. The moon is still on the opposite side of the house to the window, but there is enough light to distinguish the outlines of the furniture; and one large, hulking figure standing just off centre. Charles can tell, even without seeing its face, that it is looking directly at him; and that it must have been standing stock-still in this final corridor, waiting for him.

He cannot hear his own heartbeat. The beast breaths out, hard and fast, the quick exhalation of held breath before the deep draught of air preceding movement. Charles turns on his heel, and almost falls down the stairs in his haste. Collecting himself after at least three steps, he almost flies down them to the sound of the beast charging up the corridor. The staircase turns at a right angle along the wall, facing the bottom out into the hall; Charles skids the final few steps and almost trips over his own feet as his brain tries to catch up with the fact that he is running once more on a flat surface.

The beast doesn't bother with the stairs, instead choosing to take the more direct route over the banister rail and landing with a rippling of muscle and a heavy thud in the middle of the hallway. Charles almost slides straight into it, and in that single moment he sees the red of gums beneath drawn-back lips; long, glistening teeth with fangs almost two inches long; can smell its fetid breath as the snarl rips from its throat. But what grips tight to his memory is the bright, pale blue of its eyes, the iris tightening around the pupil as if focuses in on him.

Skin, still stained with Erik's blood, grips to the wood floor and Charles turns on a sixpence, a manoeuvre that he hasn't managed since school rugby; his knee spasms as he tears at the injured muscle of his thigh and he half-falls, catching himself in time to prevent the completion of the movement. It probably saved his life, however, as Charles feels the air move where his head had been only half a second before. He doesn't look behind him at the beast, doesn't check his surroundings for potential aids or hazards; he bolts, fear driving him, through the hall and into the breakfast room, muscle memory carrying him around the furniture even as he hears the crashing of the beast knocking them out of the way.

The kitchen door was always going to be his fortune or foible; to his luck, Charles finds it already off the latch and ajar, and he barrels through it. His heel hooks around the door and flicks it shut behind him as his hip slams into the table. Rebounding and ignoring the new flare of pain, Charles ducks as the beast charges through. It, too, hits the table, but the table shifts on its feet and the beast uses it to turn towards Charles. Charles swings the poker, catching it across the jaw and slicing a gash through its cheek.

Whilst the blow itself missed its intended target, it serves the double purpose of distracting the beast long enough for Charles to yank open the door to the boiler cupboard and slide behind it to find the entrance into the wall, and to severely piss it off.

Before Charles can get himself through the hole into the wall, it has forced one limb through the gap around the boiler at him; savage, pointed claws reaching for him and peeling thin lines of metal from the side of the boiler drum. Charles watches it, horrifically fascinated as he kicks in the wall and tumbles through.

The gap here is far narrower than the one upstairs; the kitchens are situated underground and so the interior walls were not build as thickly. Charles forces himself along using his hands as well as his feet, pulling himself sideways through the tight squeeze. He doesn't need to go far this time; just a few more yards, and then he's forcing one of the few actual concealed doors open. He's in the servants' kitchen, now; smaller and far less expensively furnished than the main kitchen. From here, there are only two options: forwards, through the door leading out into the passageway and the servants' staircase; and backwards, into the wall and back to the main kitchen.

Charles has no intention of going back. If nothing else, he is an unfailingly stubborn man, and once he's set his mind to something there's no changing it. He has been reliably informed that he would move the Earth and all that's in it to see it done.

Crossing the room, he opens the door and takes up the ready position; legs slightly more than shoulder-width apart, surer foot to the back; a cross between the batting position of cricket and baseball, only without a homeplate or the check for LBW.

(Erik had found Charles' love of cricket strangely amusing. He had helped Charles get the aerial for his radio properly connected and tuned again, following its blow-out in a storm some months ago; and Charles had cheerfully tried to explain the rules to him.

 _"This is the first thing you want to listen to?" Erik said, one eyebrow quirking infintessimally. "Not the news?"_

 _"Are you joking?" Charles replied. "I missed almost the entire Ashes test! If we're lucky, they'll do a summary of what's gone on already."_

 _"You get a daily newspaper," Erik pointed out. "That has the results."_

 _"The people who print the newspaper have neither love nor time for cricket," Charles said. "Just seeing the results is so_ bland _, Erik. It's never going to be the same as hearing it live."_

 _"Surely there's enough of an old-money presence in Westchester for there to be an interest," Erik said. "Most of the families will have an English heritage, won't they?"_

 _Charles waved a hand, still twiddling the tuning knob. "Lacrosse and tennis, maybe," he said, "but cricket, I'm afraid, doesn't seem to have travelled west. Aha!"_

 _The announcer was reading out a recap of the previous matches; Erik listened curiously for a moment or two, before his brow furrowed and he asked,_

 _"What's a duck?"_

 _Charles beamed at him, and delightedly spent the entire of the recap attempting to explain the details of the game to him. Erik simply stared at him as Charles moved from the basics to the minutiae, his expression becoming steadily more amused until he startled both of them by starting to laugh._

 _For his part, Charles was not offended in the least; it wasn't often that he managed to make a convert out of a non-native. Besides, it was the first time he'd heard Erik geniunely laugh._ )

Charles scowls at the corridor, feeling the twist and build of rage at the base of his ribcage, spreading through his stomach and clenching in his gut, clawing its way up his trachea like heartburn. He can feel the pressings of exhaustion around the fringes of his mind, creeping fingers sliding cool over his head as the adrenaline ebbed. He pushes his anger up in its place, barricading out Adenosine and feelings of despair.

 _Battle's almost here, boys. Now's the time to get angry._

He stares at the far end of the corridor beyond, at the door that leads from the main kitchen, where the beast must surely come. Cocking an ear, he listens; it is strange that it hasn't already figured out the other entrance to the kitchen, and Charles wonders if it might still be trying to claw its way past the boiler. He can't hear any sounds of destruction, however.

Lure it to him. That's the plan.

Charles purses his lips, and whistles. The sound cuts through the silence like a knife, lancing out from Charles and echoing around the stone of the corridor. He flexes his grip on the poker.

The door into the servants' quarters slams open, buckling on its hinges; the beast pushes through, one hand – paw, foot – gripping the jamb with the other forcing the crooked door out of its way. Its head turns, and it catches sight of Charles.

Swallowing hard, Charles shifts his position slightly, but he doesn't run. He wants to say something dumb and sardonic but he cannot get the words out. His tongue feels too big for his mouth, and his throat is suddenly ash-dry.

The beast steps properly into the corridor, and stalks towards him. Perhaps it believes Charles to be wily prey, now that he has escaped its clutches three times; perhaps it believes that Charles will flee again; whatever the reason, it rapidly speeds up until it is sprinting the last few steps into the doorway.

Charles sidesteps, swung the poker high over his head and brings it down hard on the back of the beast's skull as it came rushing past him. It falls with a heavy thud, momentum carrying it into the cabinets on the far wall; Charles steps quickly up behind it and hits it again, the poker smacking down with a resounding crack.

A long pause as he pants through his nose and tries to to hyperventilate. The beast is still breathing, but blood is steadily pooling around its head. He's probably fractured its skull.

"Good dog," Charles says, and giggles a little hysterically. He clamps down on the impulse immediately, taking a sharp breath and swallowing. Once he's got himself back under control, he observes the beast bleeding over his kitchen floor with a critical eye. "If you were a man," he says, rather more calmly, "then I know exactly what I'd do to you for killing my friend. But – I don't know what you are." He touches the tapered end of the poker to the small of the beast's back. "So what am I to do with you?"

There is several lengths of nylon rope in the store next to the kitchen; Charles hesitates briefly before tying the beast up, his hands unwilling to touch what had been so inimical to his mind, but he forces down the strangeness and neatly binds its limbs together with constrictor knots. Then, tying it securely to the table (that was connected to the floor via steel feet that were nailed through the stone), he stares down at it.

"I don't know what you are," he repeats into the silence.

 

Erik awakes slowly, his head full of thick, cloying fog that makes it difficult for him to get his bearings; he can feel cool, damp stone beneath his cheek, can smell blood and morning in the air. Presumably he passed out somewhere near the end of the night, because he doesn't remember changing back –

And then he remembers Charles. _Charles_ , whom he must have slaughtered like a pig last night. He screws his eyes up, feeling the endless wave of guilt crest over him; he can remember stalking Charles, hunting him through the halls of his own home. If only he hadn't been so _stupid_ and _selfish_ , then this wouldn't have happened. Why on Earth did he think that someone like him deserved the company of someone like Charles?

He must have – Charles must be dead. The last thing Erik remembers was Charles – in a fit of equal stupidity and courage – standing at the end of that corridor, as if he was going to fight Erik. And he – he'd charged Charles down. He _must_ be dead. No one ever survived the wolf.

Shifting position, Erik makes to get up; as if moving will dissipate the disgust and nausea overwhelming him; but finds that he cannot. Fear swamps him, churning in alongside the self-hatred as he realises that he is bound. He looks up.

Charles is seated next to the table to which Erik is bound. He has dressed since Erik's last cohesive memory: brown cords and white shirt; but Erik can smell the blood from the wounds in his leg and his clinically-wrapped hands. He's watching Erik with an utterly impassive expression on his face, and there's a loaded Lee-Enfield resting muzzle-down against his chair.

"Charles," he croaks, horror and relief mixing in equal parts.

"Erik," Charles says, his voice crisp and so carefully blank that Erik can feel it physically sawing through him. "I think we need to have a little talk."

 

Charles waits for a long moment before speaking again, his gaze fixed on Erik. He wants to hold it, but Erik finds his eyes stuttering away, attempting to lock onto any other image other than that cold, blank look. Wherever his eyes land, though, he is reminded of the devastation that he wreaked last night: the unnatural angle that the kitchen door hangs on its hinges; the scratches across the flagstones; the harsh, cutting scent of alcohol that seeps from behind Charles' trouser leg and his bandaged hands. The stench of blood lies heavy across everything, clawing at Erik's nose until he wants to retch, even as it twists his stomach in something nauseatingly akin to hunger.

He wants nothing more than to press his face into the side of Charles' knee, breathe in the smell of alcohol and healing and clean skin until it pushes the hunger and the animal and the reek of blood from his mind and he can _sleep_.

The exhaustion is making his brain spin, and he half-closes his eyes as he attempts to ground himself. The world shifts, slants around him; the harsh bite of the rope drags him back into himself. He tugs on them, surrepticiously, and fights down the remembered panic that is rising within him.

" _Ich werde gekettet_ ," he murmurs to himself, his tongue thick in his mouth.

"I believe the technical term is 'hogtied'," Charles says. "I hope you don't mind."

The sarcasm is so all-pervasive that it slices into Erik's mind, and he hides his flinch in the twist of his body as he hauls himself upright, sitting back on his heels. Once more, he meets Charles' gaze. The other man doesn't appear to have even blinked.

"I was wondering," Charles says, "why you told me that there was nothing dangerous in my house. I mean, that is obviously incorrect, isn't it?"

" _Ich bedauere_ ," Erik says, fatigue knotting its warm, bulbous fingers into his mind and causing him to lose the boundary between English and German. "I did not mean to lie. I just – I didn't know how to tell the truth."

"Okay," Charles says, and Erik is all too aware of the proximity of his hand to the barrel of the rifle, and the edge of gunpowder that he can taste in the air. "I can appreciate that. But I am _infinitely_ curious as to why you didn't even _try_."

"You wouldn't have believed me," Erik says. "Not without proof. You are a scientist." If Charles noticed the way his voice jolts over the last word, he doesn't mention it.

"I would have believed that _you_ believed," Charles says, his eyes furious. "And I would have done whatever you asked to make you feel secure."

Erik closes his eyes. "I was going to leave," he says. "But I – you made it so _difficult_."

Charles laughs, a single, derisive breath that sounds so wrong to Erik's ears. "Right," he says. "Of course. This is my fault."

"No; no, that's not –" Erik takes a deep breath through his nose, and tries to clear his head. "You were so kind to me," he says. "I was being selfish. I've never –"

Charles' face is still impassive, his gaze still angry. "Yes, you were," he says. "Did you not _think_ – it's basic, _human_ decency to warn someone if you're going to go on a rampage." The emphasis on _human_ is evidently placed as a barb, and Erik takes it as his due.

"You shouldn't be helping me," Erik says. "I've killed people, when I'm human, like this – you don't know what it's like."

"Oh, please," Charles says, an inch away from rolling his eyes. "Don't patronise me. I did my tour of Korea, Erik. I've seen the minds of men. I've spilt them on the grass."

Erik blinks. "Then kill me," he says, shifting forward and finding the Enfield pressed into his clavicle. He hadn't caught the movement that had shifted the butt of the rifle into Charles' shoulder and the muzzle into his chest. He leans against it. "Please."

Charles stares at him, gaze boring into Erik's as if he can read his mind; Erik pushes harder against the gun, sees it dig into the crease where Charles' arm meets his torso, sees his finger twitch towards the trigger. He closes his eyes, relief and gratitude slipping over him.

"No," Charles says, shoving Erik back onto his heels and dropping the muzzle back to the floor. "I have killed men, Erik; but I cannot kill one in cold blood. I _will_ not."

Internally, Erik despairs. He snarls, his lips curling back almost unconsciously to his gums, baring his teeth as he lunges forward. Charles knocks him back, bringing his left knee up to collide with Erik's chest and extending down his shin to cause Erik to twist as he fell, slamming his hip into the stone floor and wrenching his spine. He barely feels it, the rising anger a welcome relief from the helpless, hapless exhaustion of moments before.

"Why not?" he snaps, feeling rage bloom across his mind, mingling with his exhaustion and ravenous, never-ending hunger to grip and tear at his temples. "I'm a monster! I deserve to die."

"Maybe," Charles says. "Maybe not. I'm not the one to judge that."

"Now who's being selfish," Erik spits, forcing himself back onto his knees. It feels less of a subjugation than lying on his side in a pool of his own dried blood. "You're just too much of a _coward_."

"Selfish, yes," Charles says, getting abruptly to his feet. He steps sideways around Erik, lifting a hunting knife from its position embedded in the tabletop. "You want to die, kill yourself on your own time," he says, cutting the ropes around Erik's feet.

He stretches his toes and pushes them against the floor at a right angle to the ball of his foot, pulling the arch tight and easing some of the discomfort as blood began its sluggish trickle back into the limbs. He doesn't stand; instead he looks at Charles, and asks,

"What will you do?"

Charles looks back at him, and the moment drags. Exhaustion stabs and wafts over Erik's mind like the torn curtain in his bedroom, anger dissapating under the desperate need to rest. It feels like he hasn't eaten in days, his stomach trying to dig its way out from his abdomen through his spine, and there's a heaviness in his limbs which runs right down to his fingers that Erik can only associate with bitter, endless cold.

"I'm letting you go," he says, and Erik feels his brain stop. "I won't kill you, Erik," he continues. "Not if there is any way that I can help it. If that is what you want, then I can't help you."

Erik gets to his feet, shifting his lower back and pelvis over his heels and swinging upright in a fluid, practised movement.

"You're sending me away," he says.

"If you're so bent on dying, then it's for the best," Charles snaps. "Because I will do everything in my power to thwart you."

"Why?" Erik isn't entirely certain that he wants to know the answer, but he knows, deep in his gut, that he doesn't want to leave. He wants to stay in this ridiculous house, with this ridiculous man, and let the world outside hang. But he also knows that Charles is a scientist (which, in his head, sounds like _one of them_ ), and he needs to know why Charles refuses to kill him. Everyone else who has wanted to keep him alive had a vested interest in his survival. Usually one concerning further experimentation on his person.

Charles sighs, a long exhalation through his nose. "Because I do not believe you are a monster, Erik," he says, and it feels like a punch in the throat. "There is so much more to you than you know; not just pain and anger. There's good, too."

"I don't believe you," Erik says, after a moment. "You don't _know_ , Charles; look at me! I'm a freak of nature. I shouldn't exist."

"I know what you are," Charles says. "I know what you're capable of. I saw you, last night, when you changed back; the hide contract into your skin, the musculature and skeletal structure of your entire body screaming as it shrank. Up until yesterday, I was certain that you couldn't exist either – and yet, here you are."

The desire to sleep is almost overpowering; Erik can physically feel his faculties slowing down. He's never normally this tired following a change, and the past month he has been well-fed and -rested. There's no reason for him to be feeling so – faint.

He looks at Charles for what is probably a little too long, even though he means to speak well before he actually does. The light in the kitchen is poor, due both to the single, small window and the water-thin light of dawn running over everything; colours are almost non-existant, blurring into various shades of grey – although that could be the remnants of the wolf's vision overlaying Erik's own. It has made it impossible for Erik, especially distracted as he was, to fully register the way that Charles looks like he's gone several rounds punching above his weight.

In particular, his gaze latches onto the long, purpling stripe that up the side of Charles' face, across his cheekbone from his jaw and ending just short the outer corner of his eye. He wonders if Charles realises how close he was to losing it. His nose is bruised dark, and Erik can smell the encrusted blood within; and his lip is broken and swollen. The scabs are merely hours old, but have cracked in a myriad of places during their conversation; droplets of blood are oozing across the surface, wet and glistening and assaulting Erik with the bright, scarlet tang. He wonders, idly, what Charles tastes like.

"Erik?" Charles says, his voice concerned and sounding far away. "Are you alright?"

Erik closes his eyes as he sways forward, and focuses on not licking open all of the wounds he gave Charles and lapping up the blood as it spills.

"I don't want to go," he slurs, not really aware of what he's saying. "Don't make me leave."

Charles' hands are on his shoulders, and the exposed skin of his fingers burns against Erik's bare flesh.

"Okay," he's saying. "But right now, you need to sit down. I hit you pretty hard; I think you're feeling the effects."

His hands are free, and then he's being steered through the house. He goes where he's directed, hands pushing him gently around corners and through doorways.

"Erik," Charles is saying, and the thought passes briefly through his mind that he may have been doing so for some time. "You're going to have to open your eyes." Erik blinks, and does so. He doesn't recall closing them.

They are in what must have been the servants' washroom; the bath was iron, rather than copper, and rather smaller than the one upstairs. Charles helps him to climb in, and Erik sits with his back at the far end and his feet propped up underneath the taps; his knees are bent almost as high as the lip of the bath, but it's surprisingly comfortable.

Charles turns on the water, and Erik's toes curl as the dried blood starts to peel off under the flow.

"You have to tell me if the temperature's wrong," Charles says, and Erik nods as he crouches on one knee next to him. His hands are wet, and he rubs his thumb over the dried blood on Erik's cheek; when it catches on a raw edge of skin, Erik twitches and Charles stops. His face had felt stiff, but he hadn't realised it was wounded.

Charles cups his hands in the warm water, and uses them to pour water carefully over Erik's face, washing away the crusted blood until he can move his face freely. The cut itself isn't particularly deep; the transformation tends to heal his injuries up to a point, and then his improved metabolism takes over. The skin itself just feels tight and new.

Charles had removed his own bandages before putting his hands in the water, and Erik can smell his skin as it knits together; a dense, fresh scent that sits at the back of his mouth, sliding out from underneath the cool, sharp sting of the alcohol that lingers inbetween the fibrous clotting that has melted in the water. Charles smells of dust and brick and sweat, of soap and disinfectant, swirling together in the steam rising from Erik's stained bathwater. Gentle, firm fingers angle his chin so Charles can get a better look at the cut; Erik pushes forwards, twists his fingers in Charles' collar to pull him down, and kisses him.

Erik's mouth is wet from bathwater, and he can taste Charles' blood where it mingles with the water and dribbles into his mouth; he nudges Charles' mouth open with his own and swipes his tongue inside, chasing the taste. He feels Charles' respond, a press of his tongue against Erik's as Erik moves his mouth to suck on Charles' lower lip; but then Charles is pushing him back with firm hands on his shoulders.

Erik blinks his eyes open, his pupils wide and stuttering as they battle the fog of confused desire and fatigue in his brain, and try to focus on Charles' face. But Charles is moving away, shifting around so he is behind Erik's head and his hands are stopping Erik from turning to look at him. Instead, they gently force his chin into his chest as Charles checks as to whether he split Erik's skull the night before.

His hands are steady and careful as he washes the blood from Erik's hair, and he cannot remember a time before Westchester when someone last touched him like this; like they actually cared whether he hurt or not. A sharp press of a needle, and Erik would have told Charles that he didn't need stitches, that he'd have healed beyond their worth in a few days; but that would remove Charles' thumbs from where they were rubbing soothing circles in the base of Erik's skull.

He could still taste Charles' blood on his mouth.

The wound itself can't have been very large, because Erik only feels about four stitches before Charles is tying off the end. His breath blows goosebumps along Erik's shoulders, and he stays behind him for a long moments before moving back around the bath. He turns the taps closed, reaches between Erik's feet to remove the plugs and stands up; he grips Erik's forearms to help pull him to his feet, saying,

"You should sleep this off; you can wash up properly in the morning –"

The daylight has finally taken on a quality able to support colour, seeping mellifluous across the room and highlighting the flush creeping out from under the bruises on Charles' face, and the deep scarlet of his mouth. His lips are wet, and Erik still taste him in his mouth.

Before Charles can let him go, Erik's knees hit the rim of the bath and he tugs Charles closer. He bites down on Charles' lip, breaking the surface properly and allowing his blood to spill into Erik's mouth as he closes it around Charles' lip and sucks.

Charles makes a sound that he traps in his throat as Erik releases his lip and licks inside his open mouth; he fists Charles' shirt and holds him against the side of the bath as his other hand slides inside Charles' open collar, fingers folding over his shoulder whilst his thumb presses into his clavicle. Charles' fingers are digging into Erik's upper arms, but he seems to be under some conflict as to whether he is pushing Erik away or dragging him closer, because his tongue is pressing against and sliding over Erik's; moving, lips spit slick against Erik's, to offer a better angle to fuck his tongue into Erik's mouth.

And then he's stepping backwards, pulling Erik's with him so that he almost falls out of the bath and has to let go of Charles to redress his balance; and that is when Charles pushes a towel against him, a physical barrier between them.

"You," he says, "you need to sleep; you need to go to sleep before you collapse."

Erik stares at him, his hands wrapping the towel around his waist on autopilot. Charles sighs, runs a hand through his hair and turns on his heel.

"Come on," he says, and Erik follows.

 

He stumbles, and almost falls as they approach the second floor; Charles stops to wedge his shoulder under Erik's arm, his fingers wrapped around Erik's wrist. He is a warm, solid presence beside him, and Erik has to concentrate to ensure that he doesn't entirely lean on him.

 

"We really need to get you to bed," Charles says, after Erik falls down in actuality. Erik blinks, and smirks at him from the floor. Charles catches his look, and laughs. "I don't think that's as lecherous as you were intending," he says, and hauls Erik back to his feet.

 

Erik falls asleep with the feel of Charles' fingers on his wrist. He can still taste him.

 

The air is heavy, thick and hot with the rain that falls in fits and starts, scattering in waves across the mansion's grounds. It alternates between brief showers of large raindrops that shatter apart on the gravel and soaks deep into the soil beneath the turf, and a delicate haze of water that sifts through the air to gather in Charles' hair and on the weave of his clothes. Light from inside the house catches inside them, turning the water to diamonds and spinning rainbows between his eyelashes.

The cloud cover is dense, dark enough now that the sun has little chance of piercing it and illuminating the grounds properly; the persistant drizzle creates an effect like fog, smudging the horizon into a grey blur that warps and pulses the longer that Charles stares at it. It gives him the feeling of being strangely unreal, the lack of focus pressing against his corneas like a dream.

He narrows his gaze at the horizon and blinks water from his eyes, as if that will help him see further; the flare of his cigarette burns red and then phosphene green against the backs of his eyes as he takes a long pull, watching the ash collect and collapse from the tip. His hand is still shaking, despite the way that he was clenched it tight enough to feel the prickle of breaking skin in his palm; Charles half-closed his eyes and fought for the stillness that had enveloped him previously.

 _I can't do stitches_ , he thinks. _Charles, you fool._

The quivers drag up to his elbow, and he flexes his hand viciously, cursing himself.

 _Damn fool_ , he thinks.

The glowing tip warms his bare fingers as he inhales deeply and exhales through his nose in one smooth, fluid breath, smoke curling away into the rain and tangling in the damp weave of his clothes. He pushes out with his mind, stepping sideways from emotions that twist within him and dance, sharp and hated, in the muscles of his wrist; reaching for a problem that requires a solution, and pulling the comfort of logic and cause-and-effect around him.

 _When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth_ , he thinks, followed rapidly and cautiously by _werewolf_ and _look out, look out_.

"However improbable," he says aloud, crushing his cigarette beneath his boot. His voice sounds strange and muffled in the silence. It doesn't have the effect he'd hoped for; it doesn't drown out the carcophony of doubt and fear and helplessness that roars around his head. It doesn't clear his mind to speak his thoughts aloud, and that is enough of an indication that Charles is really, properly in trouble.

He stares out at the unseen horizon, digs his nails into his palm hard enough to bruise deep, half-moon welts, and goes back inside.

The Enfield is resting against the wall next to the interior doorjamb, muzzle down and uncocked, just as Charles left it. He stands and stares at it, the beaded droplets of water that have collected in his hair beginning their journey downwards, pulled into one another by the same inexorable drag of gravity that send them dripping onto the stone floor.

There is a revolver in his desk drawer – his father's, who was never willing to trust anyone else entirely with his safety – complete with an almost full box of cartridges; when Charles returned from Korea _sans_ Cain, he had almost thrown it out. On coming back to the mansion after Oxford, he contemplated getting rid of it again, or at least storing it with the rest of his father's things in the attic; but he is not a fool, and he understands that living alone in such a place is almost an invitation to thieves, and that status is no guarantor for safety. So, the revolver stayed, and Charles tried to think of it as little as possible.

Now, however, he is now facing a very real danger, one that he invited into his own and now resides within his walls. He cannot expunge it with good conscience, but he must look to his own protection. Erik poses a palpable threat not only to Charles' personal safety, but to the surrounding area and its population at large; and, quite possibly, to himself.

Charles locks the Enfield back into the gun cabinet, the key to which now rests permentantly around his neck, the metal warm from his skin. Then he heads upstairs, pausing briefly outside the bedroom where he deposited the mostly-unconscious Erik earlier; he can hear his breathing through the door, heavy but not laboured, indicative of a deep, as-of-yet untroubled sleep. The memory of Erik's lips against his tingles, ghost-like, over his skin, and he fights against the urge to rest his head against the door and listen to him sleep.

 _Palpable threat_ , he reminds himself, deliberately twisting his knee so that the wound tugs savagely, the pain stabbing up his thigh and clearing his head.

Continuing three doors down, Charles steps into his study, carefully avoiding the precariously stacked boxes and files and seemingly endless reams of paper – remnants of his university career, and the research for a genetics paper that he had started as his thesis and abandoned. He'd considered picking it back up now that he was back in Westchester, to fill his days with something other than pottering around his huge, empty house. Since Erik's arrival, he had barely touched it.

His desk is far less ostentacious than the one in his father's study, but it is still an impressive piece of furniture, all elegantly and intricately carved chestnut that gleams through the gaps between the books and mugs and discarded sheets of paper.

The revolver rests in the top drawer on the right-hand side, and is guarded a lock that is deceptively small and elegant; Brian Xavier had been a man protective over his work almost to the point of paranoia (except that it can hardly be paranoia when someone really was after it; Charles remembers Kurt's greedy eyes with a stab of hate in his gut), and he had ordered that every desk and cabinet in the mansion be fitted with tungsten carbide locks – something that was almost impossibly costly, due to both the rarity of the element and the difficult of its extraction. He had been forced to compromise with high speed steel which, Charles considered, was just as good for the purpose.

Its key was just as innocuous: a delicate brass thing the length of Charles' little finger. Neither the key nor the lock have been used for some time, but the key slides and turns as smoothly as ever, the tumblers rotating almost silently and unlocking with a click.

Charles pulls the drawer open, and lifts the revolver out. It fits easily into his palm, the crosshatching on the grip a marked different from its Enfield equivalent. Brian Xavier had trusted this gun – a Webley Mk4 that had seen his through the First World War – and Charles has no reason to doubt his father's faith.

He loads it, checks the mechanism and snaps it closed, dropping his arm to let it hang at his side, feeling the weight against his injured hand. He hates how comfortable it is.

 

Some three thousand miles north, the citizens of Barrow settle in for the long night. Due to its position above the Artic Circle, the most northerly settlement in the United States is well-used to winter and the month-long darkness it brings. It is also knee-deep in the knowledge that there are things that walk the night that are not entirely human.

They lock down their shutters and block up their doors and, for the most part, travel around as little as possible. Generally, it is only those who live on the outskirts of town that are at risk; they are divided from the rest of the community by physical space, and the creatures that slip through the snow following the last, long sunset tend to skirt around the city proper.

This year, however, there has been news from the ice that there is something savage and cunning and uncaring crossing over the Circle; officially, the authorities are labelling it as a rogue polar bear, but none of the tracks are indicative of a bear at all. The police force that set out to investigate the death of three white fishers on the ice went in numbers larger and more heavily armed than strictly necessary; they called on the local native population, and even their hardy and wily trackers were spooked by what they found.

Doors are barred a little more tightly this year, and the people sit up through with rifles resting across their knees, listening to the heavy, snow-muffled footfalls of something walking down the main street. It does not move like a polar bear.

 

The great, grey wolf pads silently through the town. His muzzle is scarred, as are his shoulders; remnants of past fights, evidence of past victories. The muscles shift under his skin as he moves, clear even through the thick pelt of winter fur that he carries. His stomach, normally tucked high and thin against his spine like a greyhound, has barrelled in line with his chest; a method of insulation and defence against the bitter Artic winter. It does not do to allow the cold to nip at his spine, and aerodynamics are unnecessary by comparison when running the long, icy marathon.

Snow has collected and crusted in the hair of his lower legs and feet, offering some protection from the icy wind but none from its own cold when it is pushed against skin. It is pointless to attempt to remove it; the pounding of his paws against the ice stops the snow from clumping and creating a danger for him. Now that he will run across tundra, across land, the danger is lessened further. There is little risk of thin ice here, no holes cut by seals or men in order to access the food source below.

He can smell the humans where they are nestled in their houses; the way that their fear drifts through the cracks in the buildings to catch on a breeze is tantalisingly tempting, but he has no need to eat now. The gnawing hunger that he suffered since leaving Tikhaya Bay had been sated some days ago, when he had happened upon three unwitting fishermen sitting around an ice hole. They had been easy meat.

Not even the dogs bark as he passes; they cower under chairs and behind the legs of owners, scenting the awful power of the wolf and fearing it, seeking protection of the humans and the pack.

He is walking on all fours for speed, even though his spine is curved differently and his forelegs are elbowed. He does not run entirely like a wolf, having to adapt his gait to allow for the differences in his physique, but the spine-extending lope is one that he has adopted, due to its energy-saving nature and still permitting a pace that he could not match on two legs.

A flicker in one of the windows; a human is moving behind the shutters. It is looking out at him, one wide and terrified eye fixing on him. He turns his head towards the eye and grins, pulling back his lips to display his teeth and his long, vicious canines. The scent of fear ratchets up almost impossibly, and he has to force himself to continue on. It is difficult to ignore, because it smells so _delicious_ , but he manages it. He has had years to perfect his self control.

He is through the town now, emerging from the last buildings to face the wide, empty wilderness once more.

The moon above him is large and full, her light singing in his blood. She will shine for far longer than usual, now, allowing him time to cross much of this vast tundra before he must lose this shape. The month of night changes the all the rules, even those governing something that is as unnatural and unknowable as him. He has many hours left to run in.

Sebastian rises to his full height, throws back his head and howls his greeting to the sky. Snow explodes beneath his paws as he throws himself forward, reaching out with his forelegs to pull himself into a long, rapid gallop south; away from Barrow, towards New York.

He is on the scent.

**Author's Note:**

> on my [livejournal](http://bella-epoche.livejournal.com/15549.html)


End file.
